


the shining light will sink in darkness

by moonsandstar_s



Category: RWBY
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 13:04:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5744902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonsandstar_s/pseuds/moonsandstar_s
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Misery and pain for all, when it falls. /drabble, 3x9. <br/>comments, as always, are very much appreciated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the shining light will sink in darkness

 

The beginning of the end isn’t slow, like in the tales. It comes all at once, in the form of a speech issued from the vestiges of a death. Remnant will fall. Of that, it is certain: it is a race between a hampered light and a swift dark, a dark that will invariably overcome its brother in the end.

Somewhere in the city, a young couple and their children will watch in stupefied horror as the world they had though was untouchable bows to its knees. The kingdoms they thought that were incorrigible are just as corrupted as any. Who is there to trust?

 _No one,_ they think. _No one but themselves._

There are people all around them, but right now, every person is locked in solitude of their own panic, horror, fear. The loneliness cannot be fought. Every castle can have its walls cracked wide open, and now it is every man for himself.

Ozpin watches, helplessly, from his tower. The Brotherhood planted the seeds of mistrust and revolution long ago. Now, they are finally breaking their bonds from the earth. He is a man who has lived longer than his fear, knows that fear and thought can turn to living creatures, but as he watches the military fleet fall from the sky in a rain of fire, his own emotion is all too real.

In her comatose, ice-locked sleep, deep down in the darkness of the vault, some part of Amber’s mind stirs as her other half flames with power and glee. The edges of a thousand souls breathe to her, too softly to wake. Autumn is coming, but with it, coldness shall reign once more. 

As Qrow and Glynda shoot up to the stars and the clockwork in the elevator, the confined space feels like a cell. Qrow cannot help but think of a young girl in a white cloak with laughing gray eyes: he wonders if his nieces are damned to the same end that she met. Glynda Goodwitch feels the tightly woven threads of order and peace unraveling faster than she could ever hold them together. Both of them meet each other’s eyes: emerald against ruby. But the fear in the air is palpable. The fear in the air is calling to their enemies, gathering in the shadows.

  
On the outskirts of Mistral, a young boy who once dreamed of becoming a Huntsman will stand on shaking knees as a Grimm tears through his home. He is alive only because his fear is drowned by his own numbness: his family is already dead and they were innocent; the guardians, the heroes, they have not come to the rescue. The Huntsmen and Huntresses were nothing more than a glorified lie. The red eyes of the Beowolf look like his parents’ blood as it fills the air: a cold fury fills him for this, for all he is too insignificant to fight, because this is all the fault of the people who were supposed to protect him while he was too weak to do it himself.

An old Faunus watches sadly from his static-filled hologram in Menagerie. Sorrow: because humankind and the Faunus are all the same in slaughter: no one is safe from fear, from hatred, from pain. The Grimm are few and far between, here in this sand-locked place, but when humankind falls, Remnant will go with it. This he knows; this he has always known.

Yang paces her room, blood singing with worry. Zwei barks anxiously, but Yang’s thoughts are swimming: Blake and Weiss, out in Vale, they are not safe. Ruby, at the heart of the disaster, is not safe. Her hatred for the unnamed voice that hacked the broadcast is fiery and alive. _I can’t protect them,_ Yang thinks bitterly: she couldn’t protect her father or Ruby when Summer Rose never returned. She couldn’t protect herself from Raven’s abandonment. At the moment she needs to be the strongest, she is powerless.   
  
Somewhere in Vale, Blake and Weiss see Penny fall, and the sparks that fly from her torn form seem to herald the beginning of the end. They see something die in Pyrrha’s eyes. Blake slams her cup down so hard that it shatters before she’s up and shoving through the crowd. Weiss follows after her, a simple break turned to tragedy: this happens all too often. Blake knows that the girl who she used to be — a girl who cut the connecter on a train and drifted away into the unknown — is dead now. Now, she must fight to her own end to protect her team, and her family. But there’s a bitter relief through this: her partner was not lying, just another pawn in a game of treachery.

Weiss’s heart slams through her chest as she thinks of her sister, preparing for combat under a general of lies. Ironwood’s deceit has never cost them too much, but now, she fears the price will surmount what she can pay. Winter could be killed, and yet, so could she. No one is safe: this is the work of a tyrant. At least Weiss has one comfort as they run, Blake and she, to the far-off lights of Beacon: _If we all die tonight, we will go down fighting._

But neither of them know of a small girl, one who has had too many people torn away from her, who is crying in the allies of the Amity Colosseum, her gray eyes the same shade as the rising storm ribbing the sky.

SSSN, CFVY, and JNPR watch in a transfixed horror as the Nevermore bellows above them, blue sparks raining down as citizens flee in a chaotic sea. Like everything, the force shield will inevitably shatter. The aftermath will be devastating. This is what they have trained for, but somehow, now, as it is really happening, the cold chill of certainty seems to drag at their bones, pulling them down, down, down.

Sun knows he cannot protect his team from this, that some things are unable to be fought, and he meets Neptune’s eyes with a grim promise. Sage swears and draws his broadsword, but the helplessness on his face is apparent. Jaune stares down in horror at Pyrrha, who looks like something within her has been irreparably broken; Ren is staring at the flickering figure of the pawn with anger in his eyes; Nora looks shocked.

Fox clutches at Velvet’s sleeve. The Faunus is glad, briefly, that he cannot see the horror unfolding around them. Coco’s fury vibrates through her as she sees, far across the stadium, a familiar figure leave in the chaos: it is Emerald. And each of them has a single thought running rampant through their heads: _I should have known._

The cold tile of the floor grinds against Ruby’s knees but the same sharp edge of grief that started fading years after her mother’s death is back once more. Sobs quake through her: through blurry eyes, weaponless, she staggers from the alley and to the centre of the stadium. The pain from Mercury’s blows shiver through her, but it’s meaningless to how her heart aches. She passes Penny and another sob shakes through her: how can she grieve for someone who never lived in the first place?

Pyrrha Nikos was the catalyst to Penny’s demise. But Ruby knows this is not Pyrrha’s fault. This is the fault of someone she once called a friend, and for the first time in her life as she sees Emerald leave the stadium, Ruby’s blood runs cold with the desire for revenge.

Ironwood’s panic is unleashed and the two announcers glare up at him as he sends out commands to a military that is not responding. Somewhere in the outskirts of the kingdom, soldiers lie with cooling blood, long dead.

Emerald and Mercury meet up in a small grove outside of Beacon; her smile is like a razor-slice in the dark. “It feels good to drop the disguises and lies at last,” she says, and Mercury grins, sideways and dangerous.

“Phase three has always been my favorite,” he growls happily, before he turns and takes off into the dark, Emerald thundering after him. Ashes will fly in their wake: it feels right to take revenge on the world that was so harsh to them in their youth.

Torchwick sits in an unbroken dark, but his heart beats all the faster, because he knows it is time as the guards shriek, muffled, outside his cell before silence descends. Then a line of light widens around a square of black, before the door swings open. Neo is standing there, her eyes cold as winter wind, swinging his cane and hat. He emerges into light, into shadows, and he feels both contempt and pleasure. As they run to the head of the aircraft, he kicks one of the fallen guards. All the false security duped them into their own destruction: he grins as he takes the helm, fires into the night.

Far away, Cinder Fall stands in the city that will fall and she watches the stars, the final moments they will shine before they are swallowed completely by the darkness she has forged with her own hands, her own mind.

And she feels nothing.


End file.
